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Dire decline: Farmers prep for possible 'worst' water allotment ever

By Diana Alba Soular/dalba@lcsun-news.com

Posted:
02/04/2013 07:01:49 PM MST

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A dry Rio Grande allows a Las Cruces family to sunbathe and play in the sand near the Picacho Street Bridge on Saturday. Seated from front to back, the Chihuahua named Bear; Destiny Galvan; Hennessey Mejia, 2; Melissa Montenegro; and Art Lara.

LAS CRUCES — A Rio Grande river drought entering its third year is on par to become one of the worst ever for Doña Ana County water users.

Indeed, local irrigation officials are contemplating not releasing any river water this year, a thought that has farmers from Garfield to Las Cruces to La Mesa worrying.

If there is any water issued to growers, it likely won't happen before summer —after the snowmelt runoff, little as it may be, makes it into upstream reservoirs, officials said.

"It's probably one of the worst situations I've had to face since I've been here," said Gary Esslinger, manager for the Las Cruces-based Elephant Butte Irrigation District. "If we make any release at all, it will be in June or July, and it will only be for a short duration."

Elephant Butte Lake last week sat at about 9 percent full, roughly half of what it was a year earlier, according to numbers from the federal government. The lake is the main storage reservoir for Sierra and Doña Ana county farmers, as well as El Paso County and some Mexico farmers.

"There just isn't enough usable water in storage," Esslinger said. "If we wanted to release tomorrow, it probably wouldn't even get through the Rincon Valley," he said, referring to the region around Hatch.

The situation is especially tough for farmers in Hatch, said vegetable grower Jerry Franzoy. At issue is that growers there don't have the deep groundwater supply that farmers in the adjacent Mesilla Valley draw from, when river water isn't available.

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"It's terrible; it's worse than last year," he said. "If we have two or three more years like this, Hatch might turn into a ghost valley."

The groundwater that can be pumped in the area is salty, and it's building up in soils from previous years, farmers have said. That causes growth problems for crops.

More snow?

Franzoy isn't the only farmer who's been hoping for snowfall miracles this winter in the southern Colorado and northern New Mexico regions that feed the Rio Grande. An abundant run-off this spring could turn the situation around, but so far it hasn't happened, officials said.

Snowpack so far has been OK in the Upper Rio Grande Basin, a key region, sitting at about 80 percent of average for this point in the year, according to federal numbers. That figure was buoyed by a recent storm.

Even so, "right now, we're still pretty significantly below normal for most sites in the basin," said Wayne Sleep, hydrologic technician with the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service.

"The next three or four weeks should give us a really good indication of what's going to happen run-off-wise," he said.

January, February and early March tend to be when the bulk of snow falls, Sleep said.

Part of the problem is that, even if an average snowpack materializes by the end of the winter, the water still must melt and reach Elephant Butte Lake, said Phil King, water engineer and a New Mexico State University professor.

And run-off is likely to be soaked up by land left dry from the past two years' drought, Esslinger said. The water will have to reach Elephant Butte Lake before the district can allocate it, he said.

The irrigation district is expected to receive a boost in supply from a water credit owed to it by upstream users, Esslinger and King said. That won't happen until a key annual meeting in March of members of the Rio Grande Compact, a historic agreement that guides the sharing of water among states.

Franzoy said the Rio Grande is "really what supplies our irrigation needs in Hatch." And, without it, farmers are left to cope as best they can, perhaps by changing their crop choices. Also, there's a chance that summer rain could ease the problem.

"But right now, it doesn't look good," he said.

Diana Alba Soular can be reached at (575) 541-5443; follow her on Twitter @AlbaSoular